Thursday, June 29, 2006

I'm going to take my rough storyboards I did for the pitch about the Junkyard dogs and turn it into a comic book. I'll be using that Wahl technique of printing the rough blue and inking something finished. I'll give you guys some details on the dag characters and maybe some of you could take a pass on character design. The premise, it used to be a single dog, it was around the explosion that killed Pop, the junkyard owner, and the dog was rebuilt as two dogs, both with bionic parts. That may be all I should do, not share my own version. I want ideas, what goes through your heads when you think of half robot dogs. I'll post panels as I do them. Maybe on my blog instead of this one.

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

As always, the day prior to the Rockstar Creative Session is a Tuesday, so I post what I'm working on for that session. In this case, it is a series of concepts sketches of a character called "Mr. Mustard." He is involved in the inciting incident for a novel I'm writing called "The Transdimensioners." Here is the paragraph I have (so far) that first describes Mr. Mustard:

"

Ever the word meister, Hank believes calling Mr. Mustard’s face long is a disservice to the word long. Stretched out, lean, augmented, elongated, extended don’t really do it, either. He feels that the adjective hasn’t been invented that accurately describes the length of his mug. If the length of an ordinary person’s face was an hour, Mr. Mustards would be a full work day, work through lunch, plus overtime. Hank’s friend Jeremy maintains that Mr. Mustard’s face and hands have a leathery quality as though they had been bronzed by heat of hundreds of tropical suns, but just like Hank, Jeremy is prone to exaggeration. All in all, Mr. Mustard’s darkened skin blends nicely with the golden tone of his suit and hat, and even his shoes. Everything about Mr. Mustard is gold or yellow.

"

And that’s why Hank and Jeremy started calling him Mr. Mustard."

There will be three more unique sketches by tomorrow and perhaps one that I've dressed up a bit in Photoshop. More postings after the session!

I'm trying to copy the inking style, and the archaic anatomy; but you can see my ink lines are a lot less parallel, and my lower leg, ankle and foot anatomy is actually an improvement over the original--though I like the original much more!

Having learned so much dry anatomy, I now find myself wowed by the simple charms of an impossibly twisted tibia. Unfortunately, I was too timid to maintain the hyper-stylized shape of the female's feet in my version. I would have preferred she look more like the Kirby, more bizzare and elfin....

(This splashpage image came from The Jack Kirby Collector--they were doing a survey of the Simon & Kirby 1940 {!} "Vision" run in Marvel Mystery--a comic book done for Timely Comics, apparently before the dawn of the Marvel Comics imprint.)

I am working on my comic form. I have filched this image from a Jack Kirby splashpage from the year 1940! Jimmy Bowles, Sharkfighter is my new character, and I couldn't resist redoing this great, early Kirby image with my boy Jimmy as the protagonist.

I am really intrigued by that early Kirby style, and the style of inks that his pencil got back then; the drawings are kind of primitive, the inks are done with brushes, and it's all a great premonition of the Silver Age done in a Golden Age style.(And that's about as much comics history as I know.)

I am trying to learn how to ink in this odd style. It's a chaotic image, and I like that, but my version would benefit greatly from patches of color/tone to help group things visually.

Friday, June 23, 2006

Thursday, June 22, 2006

I did the drawing with a gray marker and did my inking with a pigma brush. I scanned it in color and selected the grey color and filled it with white to get rid of it and then pushed contrast and brightness to get rid of the rest. Photoshop color after that. All done before Lake Placid was over.

Monday, June 19, 2006

Yongwoo, a friend at work, gave out this link to His friends Blog. I asked about his process, how he used the 90 minutes he allots himself to do the drawings. Apparently it's minutes for a very rough thumbnail and the rest of the time is doing the finished inking. Thought I'd try that myself. Sometime.

How do you make something an active link?

Edit: Hey Ellis! Fixed! Go back and edit your post and look at the code I added. Just copy that in a clipboard or something and just paste and change the http address...voila! --Jeff

Sunday, June 11, 2006

So this is kinda weird...I started drawing wolves just for fun... don't know why. Then a work related task came across my desk at the office so I ended up working on some wolf assets just when I was already drawing wolves at home. Strange, huh?

This is a re-do of the perspective drawing from last week. I've formalized that it is heavy industry with a large sub pen to the left and room for other areas to assemble things center and to the right. Again, this is for Privateer. I will be doing a pen and ink rendering of this along with marker, then will be putting it into Photoshop and seeing what a lightly colored render can do for it ... Stay tuned.

Monday, June 05, 2006

I'll be posting tomorrow, too, but here is a composition I'm working on that feeds both my sports and commentary sides: Barry Bonds' quest for Aaron's HR record. The finished sketch will probably have more "stuff" in it, but the basics are there. My goal is to render this in color, but with a goal that it will register just as well in black and white ...